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Binoculars - Some Basic Tips

Binoculars - Some Basic Tips

Binoculars bring the details of the lives of backyard birds into focus. With binoculars, colors are brighter and make it easy to admire the detail and beauty of your backyard friends. Good quality binoculars can be found for about $100.

The two most important features of a pair of binoculars are their magnification power and their light-gathering capability. One standard type is 7 x 35. The "7" tells you the magnifying power; These glasses magnify your vision by seven times. The "35" tells you the diameter of the large lens: 35 millimeters across. This size allows a lot of light to enter the glasses, so the image you see is bright. If you're a novice bird watcher, 7 x 35s are a good first choice.

The size of the lens (the "35" in 7 x 35, for instance) also means a larger field of view. Keep in mind that a wider lens means a bigger pair of binoculars, because the tubes must be sized to fit the lenses.

With well-known brand of binoculars (such as ......) you can be sure that you're getting good quality.

Binocular Basic Tips

It takes some practice to find and keep small birds or moving birds in your lenses and in focus. Here are a few things to that might help.

Locate a bird on the ground or in a tree. Focus your binoculars on it, and try to follow it with your binoculars as it moves around.

Find a bird in flight with your binoculars, adjust the focus, and follow it to its landing place. See how long it takes you to identify it.

Focus on birds at your feeders; admire the carefully layered and overlapping wing feathers, check out the eye colors of your birds, or examine the intricacies of head markings.